1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the present invention relate to, but are not limited to, electronic devices, and in particular, to the field of electronic device manufacturing.
2. Description of Related Art
In the current state of electronic device manufacturing, a process called flash lamp annealing (FLA) is sometimes used during the manufacture of semiconductor devices and during the development of semiconductor manufacturing processes. FLA may be employed to achieve several goals including, for example, activating ion-implanted dopants in doped regions of an electronic device such as a transistor. Other reasons for FLA may include, for example, recrystallization, reflow operations, spin on glass (SOG) annealing, silicidation, low-k/high-k dielectric annealing, and defect annealing.
In flash lamp annealing, a substrate, such as a wafer or die substrate, is typically exposed to intense electromagnetic radiation that is comprised of radiation having wavelengths across some portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. For example, in one FLA process, the electromagnetic radiation used to expose the substrate may include radiation having wavelengths corresponding to the ultraviolet region of the electromagnetic spectrum (i.e., 10 to 400 nanometers (nm)). Such electromagnetic radiation may further include the visible light spectrum (i.e., 400 to 750 nm) and even into the infrared spectrum (i.e., 750 nm to 100 microns). For purposes of this description, such electromagnetic radiation will be called “broad-spectrum” radiation.
The substrate being exposed during a flash lamp annealing process is typically exposed to the electromagnetic radiation for a time duration in the range of microseconds to hundreds of milliseconds. For example, one application of in flash lamp annealing could be to anneal a silicon substrate wherein the substrate could be exposed to intense electromagnetic radiation for less than 10 milliseconds at a power level of at least 0.015 J/cm2.